names on a memorial
by bitterindigo
Summary: Caring is forbidden in a world capable of driving you insane. A series of drabble-ish things, combined in one chapter.


AN: I'm not really sure if I like this or not (especially the ending... I have this feeling it's horribly cliché). Please review, and be honest!

* * *

She hears her name at the Reaping and thinks her heart is going to stop. When it doesn't, she walks on shaking feet to the stage and bids a silent farewell to the streets of District Nine.

She barely even notices her sister sobbing into her skirt, her father clutching her hands so tightly they turn blue. She's busy imagining the thousand ways she could die in the next week, and wondering which one will come true.

She snaps out of it only long enough to register that the food on the train is excellent.

...

It's training and he needs an ally that won't kill him in his sleep. He scans the room and decides that there are only two people who look even remotely trustworthy. The boy from Five is twelve years old. The girl from Nine looks like she's never held a weapon in her life.

He takes a deep breath and walks across the room to where she's practicing with throwing knives.

"Hey," he says.

She turns around and smiles.

...

She's easy to talk to. They've spent a full ten minutes at the camouflage station together before he realizes he hasn't told her his name.

He tells her, and she laughs. It's ridiculously long. "How do you even _spell_ that," she asks, and he dips a finger into the purple paint and writes it on her arm.

She doesn't notice that all throughout lunch, she's tracing the name with one finger.

But he does.

...

"So," Caesar asks him, "got a girl back home?" She thinks his eyes flicker to her for just a moment before he grins and launches into a detailed account of the hundreds of pretty girls that trip over each other to please him back in Eleven.

She rolls her eyes and takes a cruel, childish pleasure in the fact that she's half an inch taller than him.

...

They ride the elevator up in silence.

When they finally arrive at her floor she seems hesitant to get out. Her steps are slow and careful, like she could break apart at any second. She's staring at him and it's kind of creeping him out, but more than that he wants to never let her out of his sight so he keeps holding the door open with one hand.

"So." she says once the silence has become too brittle to hold any longer. "See you tomorrow."

Smiling is painful, but it's all he knows how to do.

"See you."

He lets the door slide closed.

...

The sixty seconds before the Games begin are the most terrifying of her life. She'll be dead in a minute, she'll be dead in a minute and so will he and the thought makes her nauseous. Time seems to stretch on forever and she's so sure that it's been sixty seconds and _why aren't they ringing the gong?_ when it goes off and she sprints towards the Cornucopia.

All she registered was him screaming at her to _get the hell out of there_ but a minute later she's not dead, the boy from Seven is, and she doesn't understand how she managed to kill him with only an aluminum medical case but she's safe and _he's_ safe and she's holding a knife and a loaf of bread in her arms. _  
_

He's incredibly angry. She doesn't care.

...

He volunteers to take the first watch that night and she goes straight to sleep without questioning him. He wonders where this trust came from. They've known each other for five days. But somehow, it's enough.

He tries to watch for Careers, for mutts, for Gamemaker traps, but he always ends up looking back at her. He thinks she may be the biggest danger to him, anyways.

She has the longest eyelashes he has ever seen.

The stars laugh at him for noticing.

...

_The winner that year is the girl from One. She goes home victorious and has nightmares every night for the rest of her life. _

_He dies alone three days into the Games. She has no body to sob over. She couldn't reach it in time.  
_

_She's killed two days after him, with his name still written on her arm. The doctors spend a good ten minutes scrubbing it off before they ship her back home in perfect condition._

_Slowly, people forget. They smash things and rebuild them, kill people and cry over the bodies, love and lose and sing and hurt and scream and dance, and _they _are just two names on a memorial. __  
_

_The world doesn't care. It keeps on spinning. _

_The stars don't care. They keep on laughing.  
_


End file.
